


The Socratic Method (Anderson MD)

by anotherbird



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Anti-Android Sentiments (Detroit: Become Human), Blood and Injury, Disabled Character, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical Case fic, Medical Drug Abuse, Medical Jargon, Medical Procedures, Mentions of Cancer, Mild Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Needles, Surgery, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, contains art, description of Cole's death, frenemies to lovers, house md au, slow burn - ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 12:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19927822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbird/pseuds/anotherbird
Summary: Hank Anderson, head of the diagnostic department of Detroit's finest hospital, can deal with almost anything. He’s got meds for the pain in his leg, he’s got a brand new team of overeager specialists to handle even the most complicated diagnostic mystery and every season of Grey’s Anatomy on his tablet to avoid clinic hours and people as a whole – If it wasn’t for the new and irritating android oncologist, who seems to be a riddle even Hank can't seem to solve. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to try.





	The Socratic Method (Anderson MD)

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be my piece for the Hankcon 2019 Bing Bang. Unfortunately the writing block bugs bit me halfway, so instead I will be posting this Chapter by chapter in a 2-3 weak rhythm. Stay tuned. The smut chapter will have extra content warnings and you'll be able to skip those parts if you are not comfortable reading them. 
> 
> Even though this is a House MD AU no further knowlegde of the show is necessary. 
> 
> Special thanks goes to [@Sho-shonojo](https://twitter.com/shonojo) who had to put up with my writing block. Please go and see and share their wonderful art. Your piece for this fic is amazing. Thank you so much!
> 
> Another big thanks goes to Synekdokee, because when I said "Hankcon House MD AU" into the tumblr void last year, you said "yes!" (I don't know if you even remember)
> 
> Every case depicted are real ones with diversions for creative reasons.

Wonderful art done by [@Sho-shonojo](https://twitter.com/shonojo)

* * *

_Connor RK800, M.D._

_Head of oncology._

Hank kept his eyes fixed on the tag, until the digital letters got blurry. Every 30 seconds the letters changed to reveal office hours and a number for urgent questions. 

The door itself was locked and no one answered, not even when Hank knocked loudly against the surface with his cane. Absentmindedly he stroked his thigh, grinded his teeth at the well-known throbbing ache.

_This has to be a fucking joke._

#

Fowler didn't even look up from his computer screen, when Hank stormed into his office, double doors flying open and closing behind him with a bang. 

“There's an Android working here.”

“No, shit.” For a brief moment Fowler's eyes left his current task to land on Hank, but returned to his work without giving anything away. 

Bastard.

“I just saw his name next to Phillips’ office. You remember Phillips? The oncology guy?”

Fowler stopped typing, his eyes landed on Hank again, who stared at him, brows raised. He gripped the handle of his cane so hard, his knuckles turned white. 

Fowler’s eyes returned to the screen. 

“Phillips transferred. His family wanted to leave Detroit. Something about an affair with the nanny.”

“So you exchange him with a machine.”

Fowler groaned and leaned back in his chair. Hank could see the vein on his forehead starting to throb with the growing visible impatience. 

“He’s a deviant, Anderson. He applied for the job with hundreds of others and was most suited for the job. There are over 200 androids already working here. So get your shit together.”

“Yes, but they're nurses and janitors or whatever. I don't have to deal with them. They ignore me and I ignore them.” 

“You have a whole overqualified posse to order around. They can talk with him.”

“Jeffrey…”

Fowler stood up. 

Time for playing the authority card, apparently. Hank had anticipated it would come up sooner or later. 

“Don't Jeffrey me and now get the fuck out of my office. And wear the damn lab coat!” 

#

Hank limped towards his office, where he found a well-known figure watching a conference table through a glass wall. 

“What kind of sausage party is that supposed to be?” North asked, without so much as looking at him. She gestured with her coffee towards the two young doctors. One was staring at the ceiling and wobbling with his chair or drawing on a notebook, obviously bored to death. The other one was staring so obviously at his colleague, whenever he wasn’t looking, it was equally painful and ridiculous to witness. Not that Hank could really fault him, though. 

He was quite pretty.

“Girl’s still missing.” Hank took the coffee from North without warning, who impaled him on a deathglare. A sip revealed it to be only lukewarm, far too strong, black and not sweetened whatsoever. He grimaced and handed it back to her.

“Who hurt you enough to drink this?”

She only rolled her eyes at him. 

“Doctor Anderson?”

He turned around to find a small woman in front of him, wearing blue scrubs. Hair cut short and a determined expression on her face, she pushed a tablet with a patient file against his chest. 

“And there’s lucky number three.” Hank declared in North's direction. 

The woman's polite face turned a little impatient and annoyed immediately.

“I think you should have a look at this.” She insisted. Her gaze shifted from him towards North and back again. 

“Don’t look at her for help. She only knows how to saw bones.” Hank took the tablet out of her hand and screened the case file. He had to admit, it was interesting. Maybe they weren’t so useless after all. 

# 

Without waiting any further he headed for the conference room, the woman close on his heels and activated the smart board behind him. The two bored out guys sat up straight immediately.

“While you were boring yourself here and making do-me-eyes at each other, your colleague…”

“Kara Axford.” She added, while she sat down on the empty side of the table. 

“Whatever.” Hank waved it off and started to write on the smartboard. “She found an interesting case. 43 year old man has dyspnea for a year, which gets worse. Theories?”

His team exchanged glances, hesitant, finally the pretty one at the head of the table raised his hands.

“Yes, McDreamy?”

The man squinted his eyes at the nickname, but answered nevertheless.

“Arteriosclerosis of the lung. Give him a balloon angioplasty and send him home.”

Hank shifted his eyes towards the woman in scrubs, who got the signal. Someone wasn't stupid. Good.

“He doesn't experience chest pain, his heartbeat is regular and his limbs are not swollen. Arteriosclerosis seems highly unlikely.” 

He pointed at the blond man, who had been mostly quiet. “Bambi goes and talks to the guy for patient history.” The guy's ears turned bright red. “After that get me an ultrasound of his heart.” With that he turned and headed over into his office. 

# 

“I have a name, you know.” 

Hank groaned, rolled his eyes more than strictly necessary, before he forced his eyes away from the computer screen and towards the figure in front of him. The pretty one. Who else?

“So? Has your name the diagnosis in it? Because that would spare us all a lot of work.”

Hank could see the fight on the poor guys face. The struggle between defying an authority figure and the urge to prove himself as the prodigy he was used to being treated as. At least this one wouldn't bore him too much. 

“Why did you chose me then? You don't really seem to care about your staff.”

Hank smiled a little, took in the spiteful stance, the twitching lips, arms crossed in defense. 

“Your daddy donated a lot of money to the hospital, he’s besties with a board member and you’re not exactly an eyesore.” Hook, line and sinker. The kid's face fell, his defiance dissolved. Hank smirked at him and turned back towards his screen, before continuing. “So even if you were an idiot, you would make the room look a lot prettier at least. It was you or a new carpet. Now go and do your job, Manfred. I can’t deal with your daddy issues now. Gotta catch up with with the latest Grey's Anatomy episode. North already threatened to spoil me.” 

#

“Has anyone seen the new oncology toaster yet?”

“The what?” North slapped Hank's hand away, as he tried to steal some of her fries from her plate. “If you don't stop this I'm gonna stab you with my fork.” 

Hank pouted, but eventually took a bite from his own burger.

“Fowler has given Phillips’ job to an android.” Hank explained after swallowing.

“So?”

“C'mon. Don't act all.." 

He stopped, when her eyes left him to stare at something that appeared to be behind his shoulders.

"What?"

“Your posse is coming.” 

“We have some results.” McDreamy declared. So they _had_ decided on a spokesperson.

Hank frowned, as he tried to decide which of his eyes to concentrate on. Maybe the blue one? Heterochromia sure was distracting. 

“So hit me up. I'm so excited.”

“We're in the cafeteria. We can't discuss confidential patient information here.” Axford objected, but Hank shrugged.

“Don't say the name then. And don't mind North here. Butcher department.” A foot met his shin under the table.

The team seemed hesitant, but in the end Bambi made a decision and spoke up.

“The patient history shows no distinctive incidents. He had an accident at work ten years ago. He experienced trauma in his face, chest and on his arms and legs, but was fully healed two weeks later.” His voice was calm and just loud enough to be audible in the cafeteria noise. 

“And the job is?”

“He is part of a SWAT unit.”

“And the ultrasound?” 

“Axford was right. No arteriosclerosis.” Manfred handed him a tablet with pictures. “His right ventricle and the atrium are enlarged. There's also a giant mass pressing on his pulmonary artery.” 

Hank scrolled through the pictures and nodded slowly. Next to the patient's aorta a giant mass seemed to be growing.

“And what could be the cause of that?” 

“Cancer?” Bambi it was more question than answer.

“It could be a pseudo aneurysm.” Axford suggested.

Hank handed the tablet back to them. “Make a CT. If it is a pseudo aneurysm he needs to get into an ER as soon as possible.” 

#

“Why the long faces?” 

When Hank found his team slouching at the conference table hours later, none of them seemed particularly excited. The smartboard showed detailed CT scans of the patient's chest.

It was Manfred, who answered first. Of course it was.

“It _is_ a pseudoaneurysm. It's sitting directly at his aorta. There's no inflammation, no deposit, no enlargements. He's not hypertensive and his connective tissue is completely healthy.”

“What a bummer.” Hank frowned. 

“He’s refusing any further treatment.”

“And what are we going to do about that? Sit here and mope?”

Three pairs of eyes glared at him in unison.

“Why don't you talk to him?” Axford snapped and crossed her arms in front of her chest. 

“You know what? Maybe I will.” 

#

“You're an idiot.”

The patient's head snapped around so fast, that even seeing it made Hank dizzy. 

“And you are?”

“Hank Anderson.” With all the time of the world Hank limped in and slowly lowered himself on the visitor's chair. He leaned his cane against the bed and took a pill bottle out of his pocket.

Under the suspicious eyes of the patient he swallowed one and offered the bottle to the patient afterwards.

“What is that?” He asked.

Hank watched him closely. The fleeing hairline, the hard and unforgiving eyes. 

“Vicodin. It's not going to help your condition, but maybe it will numb down your stupidity.” Hank shrugged, when the guy did nothing but stare at him dumbfounded and made the drugs disappear in his pockets again.

“Aren't you supposed to be my doctor?”

“You've got an pseudoaneurysm.”

“I know. This guy - Dr Pale? - already told me.”

“During your accident you injured your aorta. Most people don't survive this, unless they get operated on immediately. But instead of bleeding to death, the blood in the vascular wall of your aorta built a hematoma and connective tissue made a nice capsula around that. Most people don't survive this, not for ten years. You are lucky, the capsula hasn't ruptured yet. If it does, you'll bleed to death.”

“I was supposed to die that day.”

“And why is that?”

“A guy blew himself up, when my team was closing in on him. Two of my friends died that day. Another one was so badly injured, she had to quit her job.”

Hank watched him for a while. The guilt induced anger brooding inside him. 

“You're not helping them by dying.” Hank stood up slowly, grabbed his cane so he wouldn't put too much of his weight on his weak leg. “I can't force you to do the procedure. But I would advise you to do it and to contact a therapist. My staff can help you find someone, that can help you.”

#

Hank hated cases ending like this. Hated the shitty unfulfilling start for his new team. 

Hated it enough that it was hard to concentrate on drama that was currently happening on the TV screen.

 _“That's_ the new oncology guy.” North's elbow met his side with slightly more force than strictly necessary to get his attention. 

“What?” He followed her nodding towards the two figures, that stood outside of his office.

Hank stared. At the overly friendly face, the puppy eyes and the stupid disobedient strand of hair that kept falling in front of his forehead. He looked young, like all androids did, maybe as if in his late twenties or early thirties. His coat was so white it hurt his eyes. 

But that wasn't, what startled Hank. 

It wasn't even the smile that lingered just on the thin line between shyness and politeness, as their eyes met through the glass wall.

It was the simple fact that he had seen this particular android before. 

_Oh._

* * *

Dean Fowler's hand revealed his body temperature being 36,8 degrees celcius and the strength of his grip reached 110 and surpassed the average human Male. Connor used slightly less pressure as he returned the handshake over the large desk that was cluttered with outdated and ineffective material for note taking.

“Welcome to the Stern University Teaching Hospital, Doctor Connor.” Dean Fowler's smile appeared to be genuine, maybe a little reserved, but his tone left little doubt about his honest welcome. Connor returned his smile politely, while information about the man in front of him appeared on his HUD.

**Jeffrey Fowler, M.D.**

**Born August 8, 1982**

**Dean of Medicine**

**Specialty: endocrinology**

After a gesture from the dean, Connor settled into the chair he was offered.

“As you may know, you are the first android at our hospital, who owns a medical degree. So leading the oncology apartment will be a challenge.”

“I like a challenge.” Connor managed a reassuring and calm smile and crossed his legs in what he knew seemed like a human gesture. “My previous patients and co-workers gave me a lot of positive feedback, so I was thrilled to learn that you chose me for this position, Sir.”

“I'm not worried about your abilities. Your achievements are impressive.”

“Have there been anti-android tendencies in your staff?”

Connor’s body language analysis software registered a short hesitation, before Dean Fowler answered.

“Not really, no. But some characters are easier to handle than others.” 

Again, Connor smiled. He leaned forward a bit.

“I don't back down easily.” 

Dean Fowler's eyebrows lifted, his lips twitched in what could be presumed amusement. 

“Good. Then let me show you around.” 

As Connor already knew, the Stern University Teaching Hospital had a large variety of medical fields. As Dean Fowler introduced him to several heads of different departments he recognized a large sum of faces that he had encountered during his research on the hospital before his application. The hospital was a major player in Michigan, but was leading in one department state wide.

“That's the..”

“Department of diagnostic medicine.” Connor finished before Dean Fowler was able to and immediately apologized, taken aback by his own fast words. The man only chuckled to his relief.

“Yes, it is.” 

A young female doctor, who was wearing hygienic clothing met them in the hall, she offered a warm smile to both of them.

**Kara Axford, M.D.**

**Born April 7, 2006**

**Department of diagnostic medicine**

**Specialty: cardiology, intensive care, cardiothoracic surgery**

Connor took the hand she offered him, returned the kind smile, before she excused herself to pick up her daughter from the hospital child care.

“I heard that this department is outstanding.” Connor tried to explain his rude interruption, as they passed a conference room with two doctors.

The first one seemed frustrated, as he was researching something on a tablet.

**Markus Manfred, M.D.**

**Born August 5, 2001**

**Department of diagnostic medicine**

**Speciality: neurology**

**For further information please search for >Carl Manfred**

Doctor Manfred looked up, as they passed and nodded, eyes curious. His colleague held up his hand in a greeting, while he reorganized information on a smartboard. 

**Simon Pale, M.D.**

**Born February 23, 2001**

**Department of diagnostic medicine**

**Speciality: immunology**

They stopped in front of an office right next to the conference room, where two people were settled on a couch viewing something on a TV. The woman spotted them first, but showed little reaction apart from a barely visible nod.

**North Wright, M.D.**

**Born October 11, 2000**

**Department of trauma and emergency medicine**

**Speciality: orthopedic surgery**

Next to Connor, Dean Fowler groaned in annoyance. 

“I told him not to bring his fucking dog.” He muttered under his breath.

And indeed: just in front of the sofa a giant St. Bernard was sleeping peacefully, his head bedded on the person, that appeared to be his owner. 

**Hank Anderson, M.D.**

**Born September 6, 1985**

**Head of the department of diagnostic medicine**

**Specialty: nephrology, infectious diseases**

**For further information, see >medical file (encrypted, please see your superior for further information)**

**Author's Note:**

> You can talk to me on Tumblr [the-other-bird](http://the-other-bird.tumblr.com) or Twitter [@ItsAnotherBird](https://twitter.com/ItsAnotherBird)
> 
> If you feel like I forgot to tag something, feel free to hit me up.
> 
> I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this and let me know if you would like to have a glossary for medical terms.


End file.
